WOODBURY – As the winter months drag on, Nonnewaug agriscience students and teachers are working through this weather change, finding different ways to keep hands-on learning alive during class time even as February temperatures dip into the single digits.
Nonnewaug is different from most other high schools, as it has an agriscience program, which is the reason most students are here. The ag program attracts kids from all over who want to incorporate skills they have already learned at home or work into their day-to-day life at school. This is a privilege that most other students aren’t given. And while it is an amazing opportunity, it can have its downfalls.
To be in an ag program, you have to show up to school ready to actually work at 7:25 in the morning, no matter the weather. That doesn’t mean ready to take notes from a slideshow or pretend to pay attention to your teacher. It means you’re down in the barn dumping out frozen water buckets and moving tractors before most are even awake. When you have ag first period, you can’t show up to school in slippers and pajamas, like you’ve just rolled out of bed. Ag is a commitment, and it’s your responsibility to be ready for whatever your teacher–and environment– throws at you.
For some ag classes, the winter can calm down class time, giving students a chance to catch up on equipment maintenance and other things that might get pushed to the side when the classes are able to work outside.
“We mainly have to stay inside because we can’t do any actual landscaping when it snows on the ground.” says Nonnewaug junior Michael Venturini, a student in Joseph Laflamme’s landscaping class. “We end up doing a lot of maintenance on all the machines and equipment in the garage which we don’t really have time for when we’re out mowing every day during the spring and summer.”
Learning about the proper upkeep of machinery is a crucial part of understanding skills that future and current business owners will need later in life. LaFlamme’s background in the lawn care world helps him to teach his students everything they will need to know about the landscape industry.
“We have two curriculums that rotate each year so that every student gets a chance to learn as many different aspects of landscaping as possible.” said LaFlamme, “It is harder to teach the more hands-on aspect of the class during winter because we can’t go outside. If it were up to me, we’d be out there every day, but we really end up outside a lot less because of the weather and my classes tend to yell at me when I make them go outside.”
But landscaping isn’t the only class whose courses change when winter hits Nonnewaug’s ag classes. Mechanics, taught by Andrew Zelinski, is another that can be affected by the weather.
“Mechanics can be tough in the winter because we have to do more inside work that we wouldn’t normally be doing if we were able to go outside,” said Roger Bohan, a junior in Zelinski class. “We still go to the shop sometimes, but spend less time there and focus more on written work.”
During the warmer months, visitors can see the garage bays open almost all day with students working non stop on whatever project Zelinski has them working on. The class is overall very versatile, working to help students learn how to take care of their own machinery by allowing them to bring in their personal equipment from home and learn how to fix it. But Zelinski works to get everyone’s projects out of the shop and back home before winter hits and it’s just too cold to work in the shop every morning.
